The Death of League of Legends, a Fallen Hero.

It is with great sorrow that today we can announce the death of a fallen hero, League of Legends, 2009-2018 RIP.

In reality of course it is still on life support, still running LCS tournaments, still pulling in the odd viewers and still pulling in some players. But things have changed from the heights of season five, when the League of Legends world finals pulled in over 43 million viewers, with over 15 million concurrent viewers. Compare this to the current LCS summer split viewership where this weekend they struggled to pull in 60,000 viewers.

Or even worse compare this to an adhoc, online tournament for Fortnite also run this weekend where they pulled in nearly 800,000 viewers. Or a tournament run by Fornite’s most well known players Ninja a few months back where he also pulled in close to 600,000 viewer.

To be honest, if you compare the quality of the Fortnite tournaments to the League of Legend tournaments presentation, there is no competition, League crushes it. But the Fortnite tournaments are at the embryonic stage and will only improve. If you can pull in 800k viewers, sponsors will stat paying attention and throwing money at the space, which will drive professionalism.

Even Leagues biggest supporters are noticing the decline, with one of their most recognised streamers, NightBlue, commenting on Twitter about the lack of viewerships to the current LCS tournaments.

What happened? It is about the players. The more players you have the more viewers you have. People like watching the best players in the world playing a game that they also play. Learning new tricks, revelling in sweat oves that no mere mortal could pull of. You lose your players you lose your viewership.

League of Legends has had a couple tough years, having to revert a bunch of changes after community uproar, having a dev say that Tyler1, a controversial streamer, will “die from a coke overdose” and being notorious as having one of the most toxic player communities in gaming.

Now, I used to play League, I spent hundreds on it over the years, but I thought it was good value for the entertainment it provided, certiantly better value than paying $15 to see a two hour movie. I now play Fortnite.

Is it because Fortnite a better game, no, the truth is it is not. There is less strategy in Fornite, and the balance between luck and skill is much more tilted towards luck in Fortnite than that of League. In League it is more about being skilled with your champ, understanding the best build paths and knowing when to engage, rather than getting lucky and finding good loot that will essentall allow you to crush even a better skilled player in Fortnite.

But here is why I play Fortnite over League, it is less toxic. It really is that simple.

I was a jungle main in LoL, the amount of abuse I would get in chat was next level. I would come home from work, fire up LoL for a couple of relaxing hours of gameplay, while I processed the days activities. But of course in LoL thats just not possible, you get a constant flow of abuse from other players. It gets worse when the other players are duoQ, because then it is not a single player abusing you it is two players.

Then human nature kicks in, and as it looks like the game is lost the other players look for someone to blame and they pile on the abuse on whoever the duoQ players were abusing. Great way to relax right? Ummmmm….No.

The other thing that surprises me with LoL is that they have a really popular game mode called Urf. Everyone loves it, yet Riot is reluctant to allow it to be played for more than a few days a year. You read that right, the company that made the game doesn’t want players to play their game in what is essentially “fun mode”. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Fortnite on the other hand has lots of rotating “fun mode” versions of the game, including one where everyone essentially has rocket launchers as weapons!

I have played 1200 games of Fortnite this year and one game of LoL. How many times was I abused in Fortnite? Zero. How many times was I abused in LoL? That would be, 18 times, IN A SINGLE GAME!!!!

This should be a quick fix, block chat for all players until you reach high Gold or Diamond level. Once you get to that level of play, you are more invested in being an honorable player, you are also likely to better understand the game and not blame other players for the misplay, you recognise how your play contributed to the mistake.

Riot if you are reading this article, here is a simple formula for you: